Lesson 1:A crow was sitting on a tree, doing nothing all day. A small rabbit saw the crow, and asked him, "Can I also sit like you and do nothing all day long?" The crow answered: "Sure, why not." So the rabbit sat on the ground below the crow, and rested. All of a sudden, a fox appeared, jumped on the rabbit and ate it.

Management Lesson: To be sitting and doing nothing, you must be sitting very, very high up.

Lesson 2:A turkey was chatting with a bull."I would love to be able to get to the top of that tree," sighed the turkey, "but I haven't got the energy."

"Well, why don't you nibble on some of my droppings?" replied the bull. "They're packed with nutrients."

The turkey pecked at a lump of dung and found that it actually gave him enough strength to reach the first branch of the tree.

The next day, after eating some more dung, he reached the second branch. Finally, after a forenight, there he was proudly perched at the top of the tree. Soon he was promptly spotted by a farmer, who shot the turkey out of the tree.

Management Lesson: Bullshit might get you to the top, but it won't keep you there.

Lesson 3:A little bird was flying South for the winter. It was so cold, the bird froze and fell to the ground in a large field. While it was lying there, a cow came by and dropped some dung on it. As the frozen bird lay there in the pile of dung, it began to realize how warm it was. The dung was actually thawing him out! He lay there all warm and happy and soon began to sing for joy.

A passing cat heard the bird singing and came to investigate. Following the sound, the cat discovered the bird under the pile of cow dung and promptly dug him out and ate him!

Management Lessons:1) Not everyone who drops shit on you is your enemy.2) Not everyone who gets you out of shit is your friend.3) And when you're in deep shit, keep your mouth shut.

Wow, BBC News reports that the atomic clock, the time-keeping device that governs all aspects of our lives, is celebrating its 50th year. The first accurate caesium atomic clock was developed at the NPL in 1955 by Dr Louis Essen.

Atomic clocks form the standard for Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), which governs legal time-keeping globally. The clocks are vital for rafts of technologies, such as global satellite navigation (GPS), coordinating packets of data which are transferred across the internet, and mobile telephony.Even London's Big Ben relies on atomic clocks to keep it right.

Using a beam of caesium-133 atoms, generated from a special type of oven, the best present-day atomic clocks are able to keep time to within a 10th of a billionth of a second a day. They do this by counting time based on the way cooled-down caesium atoms jump back and forth between different energy levels. This occurs at microwave frequencies, with nearly 9.2 billion jumps making up the interval of time known as the second.

And here is an page on the history of atomic clocks at NIST (US National Institute of Standards and Technology).

* Go to your room!* I agree with you!* Don't you just love it?* It only exists between your ears!* Do you want to talk about it?* Excuse me?* Let's agree that we disagree* This is a win-win situation* Aren't you a sweet little animal?* Your right or mine?